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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Earn Your Right To Wear White

This lovely thong comes courtesy ofThe Daily Christian.For a mere $8.99 you can have a daily reminder on your crotch about the importance of being virginal. Better keep it pure because Mr.Perfect doesn't want used goods. Hey do you think that if you happen to be a lesbian the message would be the same? I'm thinking nope cause these fundies don't recognize that as real sex anyway. Will these idiots never run out of ways to police female sexuality?

The other troubling aspect of this insulting little advertisement is whiteness as the personification of goodness and purity. I suppose if it had been printed on a black thong women would have just lost all control and had sex willy nilly all over the place. We're all just striving to achieve whiteness and goodness...

10 comments:

The people who market this crap are just making jokes of themselves and unintentionaly serving to promote what they claim to opose. I imagine that most of those wearing these are wearing them ironicaly.

@Larry Unfortunately I don't believe they are wearing them ironically the abstinence movement is huge...it is supported by things like purity balls...the controlling of female sexuality has really gone mainstream and I find it frightening.

Unfortunately I don't believe they are wearing them ironically the abstinence movement is huge

Those who buy them are not thinking of it as ironic. I am sure that the parents believe that their little princeses are buying the BS. They are sadly mistaken. The kids know that this stuff is BS and reject it. They are the ones who will see this product in the ironic light it deserves.

Wow, interesting perspective. I think there's some validity to the abstinence movement. Some, possibly a small percentage, are heeding the message and it isn't just directed to females. The Purity Ball is only one aspect of trying to encourage young people to remain virgins until marriage and it just happens to be geared toward females. Someone should step up and direct something specifically toward males. I think those who criticize this are missing the big picture and those who aren't successful with it are also missing something.

In essence, there isn't anything wrong with remaining abstinent, but it is a choice so let those who decide to choose that have their ways of doing it. Or not doing it! LOL. An-t-way, to each his - or her - own.

One day I may post on my own past involvement with the abstinence movement.

As a teenager I was part of the program True Love Waits, which coupled religious education with abstinence only sex education. At the end of the program, each teenager - male and female - signed a pledge card vowing to abstain from sex until marriage.

That particular program, while no doubt aiming to police female sexuality, was as harmful to the boys as it was to the girls, teaching both genders that our sexuality, and by extension our very bodies, are at the very least in need of serious restraint. I've written some on the philosophic commitments that undergird this fear of the sexual, most notably neo-Platonism. But I've never put together an autobiographical post that serves as a kind of post-mortum analysis.

Ironically, I - who have abandoned both philosophic commitments that undergird this sexual ethic and the sexual ethic itself - am one of the few people in that program that made good on the vow we took. And that as much as the psychological damage done especially to girls but also to boys, is the real harm of this movement. Abstinence programs have little demonstrated impact on teenage sexual behavior. Teenagers who have gone through such programs are no less (or, at best, trivially less) likely to have sex than their peers. However, they are considerably less likely to have safe sex, for reasons I may get into in my hypothetical future post.

In any event, the abstinence program that I was a part of, as well as the ethos of the culture around me at that time in my life, did me no favors after I got married and became sexually active. That's for sure. It is extremely unhealthy to teach teenagers that sex is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad!; and then say, OK, now it's good.

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About Me

I am the mother of two darling little boys that fill my life with hope. They have inspired me to help raise awareness of the issues that plague this little blue planet.
If you are looking for a blog that is all about how wonderful and rosy this world is, turn right because this space will not be for you. I am a committed humanist. I believe in the value of people over commodities. I believe in the human right to food, clothing, shelter, and education. I am pacifist, anti-racist, WOC. My truth may not be your truth, but I intend to speak it nonetheless.
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